James Baldwin accomplished things when he wrote “Sonny’s Blues—not only is the story a memoir of the lives of African Americans in Harlem in the 1950’s but also a story about the struggles and decisions that affect family and brotherhood. Harlem, the setting, traps the African Americans who call it home; it traps them in a life of poverty, crime, and anger. Two brothers choose very different paths: the narrator becomes a respectable teacher whose goal is to assimilate into a white society, and the other is a jazz musician, a heroin addict, also hooked on a life of crime, who turns to music to find himself and connect to his community and heritage. Baldwin depicts the plight of African American men in the urban communities through such themes
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Harlem, during the 1950’s was a tough neighborhood to grow up in; it had everything bad there that a good neighborhood doesn’t like drugs, crime, poor schools, and rundown houses. The narrator describes his feeling as he says “I was scared, I was scared for Sonny” (Literature Thirteen Edition 49). He had just read the newspaper and discovered that his younger brother had been picked up and arrested for peddling and using heroin. The narrator knew that they were predisposed to these situations since it was easier to give in to the surrounding than it is to fight it; losing the battle is what he always feared for himself and his …show more content…
In most cases there was sufficient reason to be angry, especially when the problems are avoidable but inescapable when the environment is the main factor that situations happen. For example, the narrator says” These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage” (Oxford University Press 2013). Living in an impoverish neighborhood where it’s a dog eat dog world, nobody can be trusted; everybody is full of pain and resentment. Moreover, the narrator is told a story by his mother how their uncle who had been killed by some white teenager and left for dead, how it plagued their father up until his death. Also, Sonny got angry when he felt like the narrator wasn’t listening to him and not trying to understand how he felt about what he wanted to do in life. He felt like he deserved to be able to do what he wanted to do, just like everybody else. Anger was definitely a major part of James Baldwin’s theme of the story Sonny’s
Harlem, during the 1950’s was a tough neighborhood to grow up in; it had everything bad there that a good neighborhood doesn’t like drugs, crime, poor schools, and rundown houses. The narrator describes his feeling as he says “I was scared, I was scared for Sonny” (Literature Thirteen Edition 49). He had just read the newspaper and discovered that his younger brother had been picked up and arrested for peddling and using heroin. The narrator knew that they were predisposed to these situations since it was easier to give in to the surrounding than it is to fight it; losing the battle is what he always feared for himself and his …show more content…
In most cases there was sufficient reason to be angry, especially when the problems are avoidable but inescapable when the environment is the main factor that situations happen. For example, the narrator says” These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage” (Oxford University Press 2013). Living in an impoverish neighborhood where it’s a dog eat dog world, nobody can be trusted; everybody is full of pain and resentment. Moreover, the narrator is told a story by his mother how their uncle who had been killed by some white teenager and left for dead, how it plagued their father up until his death. Also, Sonny got angry when he felt like the narrator wasn’t listening to him and not trying to understand how he felt about what he wanted to do in life. He felt like he deserved to be able to do what he wanted to do, just like everybody else. Anger was definitely a major part of James Baldwin’s theme of the story Sonny’s